Episode 3: The Plunderers

Who really owns America's public lands, and who is trying to take them away? Episode three, "The Plunderers," follows the money. It opens with four hunters from Missouri who crossed from one corner of public land to another without ever touching a wealthy landowner's ranch — and were sued for eight million dollars for it. That case is the small version of a much larger story: how enormous private wealth is converting what belongs to all of us into what belongs to them. Hosts Bill Hedden and John Leshy trace the pattern across the country. In Minnesota, a Chilean mining magnate who was once landlord to the president's daughter is pressing to dig at the doorstep of the Boundary Waters — the most visited wilderness in America. In Alaska, the federal government has taken an ownership stake in a mining company while approving a 211-mile industrial road through wilderness and a national park to reach it, making itself regulator and investor at once. And in Washington, fossil fuel interests that gave hundreds of millions of dollars in the 2024 election received, in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, almost precisely the leasing, royalty cuts, and permitting they had asked for. Underneath these deals lies the decay that made them possible: decades of spending to reshape the federal courts, the Citizens United ruling that opened the floodgates to corporate money, and the donor network behind Project 2025, whose blueprint the OBBBA follows closely. You will hear from Land Tawney on the "Missouri Four"; from lifelong Republicans Ty Cobb and David Jenkins, who describe a level of corruption they say they have never seen from their own party's leadership; from former Alaska Lieutenant Governor Fran Ulmer on a state treated as an "opportunity zone"; from journalist Nick Mott on who is buying up the West; and from Zuni farmer Jim Enote on "the resource curse." *On Common Ground: An American Inheritance* tells the story of the lands that belong to all of us, and of the fight to protect them. All six episodes available in August. Follow now so the next episode lands in your feed automatically. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/on\common\ground\_ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@on.common.ground YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@OnCommon\_Ground *On Common Ground: An American Inheritance* is hosted by Bill Hedden and John Leshy. Produced by Sarah Hedden, Dagny Scott, and Del Feltz. Sound engineering by Joe Flood. This series is a production of Eleven Dollar Bill, and a project of the Getches-Wilkinson Center at the University of Colorado Law School.